Kashmir Apple Industry Pays Price for Panic | Kashmir Life

SRINAGAR: As Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storage chambers open across Kashmir this spring, growers are confronting the costly fallout of last year’s panic. Immature apples harvested too early in August 2025 have emerged damaged, with higher-than-normal losses in quality, firmness and market value.

The crisis began in August 2025 when relentless rains triggered widespread fruit drop in orchards and blocked the arterial Srinagar-Jammu highway, stranding nearly 6,000 apple-laden trucks. Fearing total crop loss, growers rushed into a mass premature harvest, nearly a month before the traditional September 20 start, flooding the cold chain with under-ripe, poorly graded fruit the system was never designed to handle.

A senior CA store owner, speaking anonymously, described the chaos. “Facilities designed to stabilise just over 100 metric tonnes per day were forced to accept up to 400 tonnes daily,” he said. “The fruit, harvested before ideal maturity, took far longer to reach safe CA conditions, leading to physiological disorders like scald, loss of firmness and colour deterioration.”

By late September, 90 per cent of storage capacity was exhausted. Bashir Ahmad Naikoo, president of the Jammu and Kashmir Processing and Integrated Cold Chain Association (JKPICCA), said the industry had warned authorities immediately. “We wrote to the Deputy Commissioner in Pulwama and SKUAST, explaining the damage premature harvesting would cause,” Naikoo said. “But mandi owners and the government pressured us to accept the crop to save growers from ruin.”

Dr Imtiaz Zargar, scientist at SKUAST-Kashmir and technical consultant to the CA network, was blunt: “CA stores are for A-grade fruit only. They preserve quality; they cannot fix immaturity. Early-harvested apples develop scald and lose market value rapidly once chambers open.” He noted that normal post-storage losses of 3-5 per cent are expected to reach 8 per cent this season.

Kashmir currently has 2.92 lakh metric tonnes of CA storage against a required 6 lakh tonnes, barely half what the industry needs. An additional 35 chambers are opening this year, but the gap remains critical.

Growers and experts are calling for urgent reforms: timely harvesting awareness campaigns, mandatory pre-storage grading, and crop insurance that covers apples once they enter CA stores. Without these, every future weather disruption risks repeating the same expensive panic.

The lesson is clear: cold storage preserves excellence — it cannot redeem fruit harvested out of fear.